Imagine There's No Heaven

[iamresponding]

Who| Rich Rider and YOU
What| Laying face down in the grass in Central Park like a goon
Where| Central Park in the Habitat area of the ship
When| Same day he woke up, natch
Warnings/Notes| Nothing really.

Rich hated being told to slow down. There was a part of him that was screaming at him to be on the move. After all, there had to be 8X8 planetary distress calls to answer; this universe was supposedly as much of a mess as his was.

But the medicos here refused to budge on the "you need rest and time to adjust, especially since you need to adjust to the prosthetic arm" thing so here he was resting and trying to adjust. Kind of. If tooling around the whole ship without stopping was the same as resting and adjusting. Because he couldn't seem to stand still.

Admittedly, even just walking was hard. The Nova Force was still there -- he could feel it -- but it was definitely diminished somehow and that meant his invulnerability and superstrength were gone. Without that pinpoint precision and body awareness it gave him at full capacity, his extremities were a little numb and he was clumsy as anything, just like he was the last time he'd lost the Nova Force.

So after a whole day of pacing around the ship from place to place -- and constantly tripping over his own feet as he did it -- he walked through Central Park (Central Park! Made just for him, reconstructed out of old historical records!) and tripped one last time over his own feet, practically falling on his face in the middle of Strawberry Fields, not far from the "Imagine" John Lennon memorial.

Then he just...stopped. Finally. Because he was alive and he felt grass on his face. How long had it been since he actually felt grass? So he kicked off his boots and socks, too, digging his toes into it.

He'd almost forgotten what grass felt like, but it was itchy and smelled green and earthy and non-sterile in the way everything in space didn't. And as itchy as it was, it was...nice.

Apparently, the Human Rocket could slow down for at least a little while. How 'bout that?

Since he was focusing a bit more on the grass and the light artificial breeze, and his own breathing (he was alive, he was breathing) he wasn't focusing on how it looked to be a grown man face down in the middle of a field.

Truth be told, it looked pretty ridiculous.

Comments

[wherenoonegoes]

Hiccup and Toothless had taken to exploring the various Habitat sections. Usually by flying through them at high speeds, but Central Park was of the areas that had warranted a closer look.

Toothless was the one who found Rich first. It was possible Rich himself hadn't noticed the dragon, as stealthy as Toothless could be even when he wasn't putting his mind to it. The Night Fury prodded at the figure on the ground with a claw, giving a questioning rumble.

[iamresponding]

Rich noticed the sounds of something heavy on the grass sneaking up on him, because he was pretty hypervigilant to attacks, so by the time Toothless went to prod at him, his brain was already kicking into "fight" mode.

He quickly rolled over and away, lifting up a fist and pointing it, in case he needed to blast his attacker and -- oh.

Okay.

"Welp. You're a dragon." That wasn't even new. Hell, Moondragon had turned into a literal dragon for a while. He lowered his hand slightly. "You gonna try to eat me or are you the friendly kind that lives by the sea?"

Another important question: was it sentient and could it understand him? He figured how it responded to him talking to it would help figure that out.

[wherenoonegoes]

That garnered an eyeroll from the dragon. No, he was not going to eat him. Still, Toothless realized that the man might need the reassurance. He turned to the side, giving Rich a wide view of his saddle and false tailfin.

If nothing else, the man-made object (Or in this case Athramite-made, built to replace the original leather one) should show that he was fairly well acclimated to people.

[iamresponding]

"Did you just roll your eyes at me?"

Clearly, this was an intelligent dragon. Maybe an intelligent teenage dragon, judging from the eye-rolling. He finally lowered his hand and craned his neck as he sat there, eyeing the saddle and tail rig.

"Very impressive," he said. "Y'know, on account of the fact that must've been hard to make when you don't have opposable thumbs."

Rich knew the dragon probably didn't make that. He knew they were showing it off to show they were used to humans and probably had a rider. But he was just messing with the dragon at this point.

Which was perhaps not a wise move, 'cause it was a dragon, but he doubted they would've been free to run around the joint if they were going to fry everyone that annoyed them. Still, maybe he should be more careful, especially with his invulnerability gone...

"I'm just messing with you." A pause. "Which I probably shouldn't be doing. My world has a saying, 'Never laugh at live dragons.'"

Well. It wasn't so much a saying as a nerd reference he still remembered from reading The Hobbit in his very introverted and misspent youth, but he figured it still counted. He always played it fast and loose with telling people in space about Earth sayings. For instance, most of the Kree he knew now thought "Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration," was an ancient Earth proverb, thanks to him.

"So, uh. Sorry. You're trying to say you're used to being around people, right? You have a rider? A partner?"

[wherenoonegoes]

Toothless nodded, and realized this whole conversation would be much easier if said rider were present. True, he had a remarkable ability to get his thoughts across without words, but Hiccup was able to get what he wanted to say with very little prompting.

And so Toothless roared, to get Hiccup's attention. That fact that it could make anybody unprepared jump was just a fringe benefit.

A tall, gangly man arrived in short order. "So this is where you wandered off to."

[nerdninja]

For a nerd in space, the first priority was pretty obvious.

No matter how long Donatello spent walking around the ship, it never seemed to end. There was something more in every direction, and while some of it was more interesting than other parts, all of it was interesting, full stop. Whether that was because of being jam-packed with more advanced tech than he'd had the chance to touch even in Dimension X, or because of the people from planets he'd never heard of hanging out there, or -

- because somehow they'd managed to pretty accurately replicate a chunk of Central Park in the middle of a ship hurtling through unknown space in another dimension.

"...okay, that's the last thing I thought I'd see here."

It might be the most familiar thing he'd seen all day, but that alone made it worth stopping and checking out in itself.

[iamresponding]

"They designed it for me," said the guy who was currently face-down in the grass a little ways away. "It was either this or the beach at Long Island Sound. My family used to have a little beach house on Montauk Point when I was growin' up. Y'know, back before they declared soda bottles and beer cans part of the native animal population."

Rich didn't look up from where he was faceplanted on the ground but can you really blame the guy? It'd finally struck him in a crazily sobering moment that he was alive again. Alive.

Alive and in the middle of Central park, with grass on his cheek and grass under his toes and air in his lungs that smelled like it hadn't been put through a recycler fifty thousand times. Maybe this wasn't the real Central Park (and it was definitely recognizable as such since the skyline wasn't there) but it was the closest he'd been to home in a very a long time.

And it was the first he'd been able to breathe after what felt like an impossibly long time. How long had he even been dead? Or...dissipated into energy? Whatever it was.

He gestured vaguely in Donnie's direction with a hand, still face down in the grass. He hadn't looked at him yet.

"Feel free to pull up a patch of grass. The fake sun's feelin' great right now."

[nerdninja]

"Fake sun's more sun than I usually see this in, so I guess I can't complain." He flopped down to sit on the grass, dropping his bo staff next to him and leaning back on his hands.

It looked a lot nicer by day. And when he didn't have to constantly watch his own back - to be fair, that probably made it look even better than the light did. It wouldn't be accurate to say that Donatello disliked the ninja lifestyle, or that he wasn't content with it, but sometimes? Things got old.

Just walking around the ship without getting funny looks, being able to sit here in the middle of a New York that was completely lacking in people to stare or scream or cause some kind of commotion at having a giant turtle in their midst - it was pretty nice, he had to admit.

[iamresponding]

"Same. With how much time I spend rocketing around in space, I don't really get sun often. And it's not as if I ever have time to soak up some rays at the beach --"

Rich finally turned his head to look at who'd joined him. Whoever it was sounded young, and --

-- and that was a ninja turtle. He was sitting in a Central Park on an alien ship with a ninja turtle. At first his brain did a full stop, screeching to a halt, like it always did when he ran into something exceedingly strange. Then there was that little voice in the back of his brain that always chimed up when reality got this weird, and it said, You're friends with a talking, telepathic, Russian cosmonaut dog. This is your life now, deal with it.

And then all was well, because he was friends with a talking, telepathic, Russian cosmonaut dog. And friendly with a talking raccoon who loved shooting things with guns bigger than he was. And he'd heard stories about that talking duck guy back home on Earth. Everyone had heard stories about the talking duck guy.

So his brain settled down again, quietly accepting that yes, this was his life now, and he held out a hand for shaking, still laying there on the ground.

"I'm Rich Rider. I also go by Nova."

He wouldn't let on that he'd already guessed who the turtle guy was. For one thing, he wasn't 100% sure he was right because hey, alternate universes. For another, it might cause some kind of existential crisis or something. Better to never mention it at all and just have his inner ten-year-old self quietly scream in joy in the back of his head.

[nerdninja]

The question of what this guy was doing facedown on the ground was still up in the air, but Donatello ignored it to reach out and shake his hand.

"Donatello."

(The question of "why facedown in the grass" probably had a less interesting answer than the many other questions on his mind, after all.)

"So, what do you think the odds are that out of infinite possible locations in infinite possible universes, they'd grab multiple people from New York?"

[stillshinigami]

And walking up on this guy, face down with no context, he jogs over and looks down at him. He was moving, good sign. Being closer he could tell that the man was conscious and alive, so no emergency to call in thankfully. That left him mildly amused at the person who was basically enjoying a turf sandwich.

A dry chuckle escapes him.

"Looks like you're having fun. Is this some sorta custom I haven't heard of?"

[iamresponding]

"Nope."

This was him enjoying a turf sandwich, really. A delicious, delicious "I am on solid ground and alive" turf sandwich.

"Just kinda enjoying the moment."

Enjoying a moment. Enjoying that there were moments. Rich turned over onto his back and stretched out in the grass, looking up at the false sky, lit up by its false sunlight. He dug his toes into the grass even more and breathed in deep.

"Before all this, I'd barely spent any time planetside in ages." A pause. "And the times I was planetside I didn't exactly get a chance to lounge around."

The first time he'd gone back home, that whole thing had been a mess. The world had been so crazy with all that registration nonsense and the Thunderbolts gunning for him and Robbie in that creepy suit. (He still felt guilty leaving him behind like that but he had to have contacted the other New Warriors like Vance by now so they could make sure he was okay, right?) He'd just been too...shell-shocked to deal with it all. Not that he really thought he had PTSD or anything like that but in that moment, the war had been too fresh to deal with conflict like that on the home front.

The other times he'd been home he'd been busy with the Skrull invasion, then with the Xandarian supercomputer in his head, the Worldmind, losing it and recruiting more Novas behind his back, then with the Many-Angled ones...

He hadn't had any time to slow down and actually enjoy it.

He still wasn't sure how he felt about the medicos forcing him, too. On the one hand, the grass felt great. On the other hand, every second he was laying there he felt almost...guilty. Surely, there had to be people out there that needed his help. Was it fair of him to just be laying around like this, like a lump? But maybe it didn't count as him turning his back on them if he was being forced to slow down for a few days.

"Also, I was dead."

He dropped that like it was perfectly normal for people to randomly come back to life.

[stillshinigami]

Duo would argue it was more than fair to be laying there and enjoying life and the little intricacies of it all. It was so easy for people embroiled in constant warfare and battles to forget what you're really fighting for. He just smiles slightly, more amused than anything at the guy's enthusiasm for the soft ground letting the guy say his peace. Yeah, he could relate. Sort of.

"I've only been to Earth once. It's quite the place but I'm a colony boy at heart." That and there wasn't much opportunity to go to Earth unless you were taking part in the post colony drop clean up and restoration programs.

Then the man makes a comment that makes Duo pause, observe, and chuckle softly, mirthless but understanding. "That'll do it."

It endears the guy enough to Duo that he decides to take a seat about a yard away from him.

"How do you get 'un-dead' anyway? Hell, probably got somethin' to do with messing with space and time and the multiverse." Which is something he rarely thinks about, and really doesn't want to.

"You think we're gonna wake up some time and think it was all a dream in the end?"

[iamresponding]

Now that was cool. This guy being born on a colony. He'd been to plenty of space colonies, but Earth wasn't quite there yet and the idea that there were places out there where Earth had advanced that far was exciting. That was one reason he was actually a little excited about the universe they were currently in.

Apparently, there was a colony on Mars. How great was that?

"I have no idea how I'm alive. I died by using this...this really powerful reality-altering artifact called a cosmic cube. Combined it with the Nova Force, the energy I carry inside me, and I became a dimensional door to get my friends out of this hell dimension. Then I just...dissipated."

And he was pretty sure he'd been gone gone. Dead.

Probably.

"I don't think this is a dream. I just think the universe is a funny place now and again. Maybe something or someone powerful collected all that dissipated energy up. Scooped me together and made me whole again. I dunno." He kept digging his toes into the grass, wiggling them. "I've been a little too busy just enjoying being here again to spend much time figuring out the whys and wherefores. Not sure that's a gift horse whose mouth I really want a glimpse inside of, y'know?"

[stillshinigami]

He listens, looking up to the sky, briefly whistful gaze in his eyes before glancing back to Rich' to listen to his story. Hm.

"Never died, but got pretty close once or twice." Mostly just cutting it close to defeat, where as another left him with a lingering twinge of regret. Part of him would have rather died on principal, a martyr for the cause if need be, in the end he survived as usual. There was also some bitterness there, but there was no need to throw salt in the wound.

"Maybe. Seems like it takes an awful lot of power just to bring us here from all these worlds. And damn, you're coming from another world with super powers. This all goes way over my head." He pauses and chuckles, then lays back in the grass to enjoy himself.

"It's nice not to have t' think about all the shit back home for a while. Even if it feels like some of it followed me along here." But he doesn't have to play the soldier anymore. Not for a while.

It's the colonies he would be fighting for now after all, it would be the Legion.

[ribticklers]

Sans had been exploring his new surroundings. There was a lot to explore, way more than the Underground--maybe more than the human world, too, but Sans hadn't had time to explore that before he ended up here. The Habitats were especially interesting, varying wildly based on just a few steps (or hops, or leaps). This place was green and earthy and open in a way he wasn't used to. It was nice.

Also, there was a human face down in the middle of it all. Well, they looked human, at least. Hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket, he took a few steps forward.

"So, are you grazing, or...?"

[iamresponding]

"Nah, I don't have much of an appetite right now," Rich joked, as if he was saving some for later.

He wondered if the question was being asked seriously or jokingly. If he saw someone face down in the grass he'd possibly think they were grazing, too. He'd been around enough aliens to know some of them might eat grass.

"I'm just kinda enjoying solid ground. I'm not on it as often as I'd like."

Hell, even when he was planetside somewhere, sometimes he spent half his time in the air because he was busy fighting.

He finally turned his head to see who was talking to him and -- oh. Oh, that was a talking skeleton. Okay. Rich blinked once. Twice. Then his expression went from surprise back to looking like he found it perfectly normal to be talking to a talking skeleton.

And at least he wasn't a space zombie, right? He'd hated the space zombies.

"There's a part of my brain telling me I should be screaming at seeing a talking skeleton, but then there's another part of my brain pointing out I come from a world with a Nazi made of bees."

[ribticklers]

The reaction, when the human (maybe? They look human, but here he probably shouldn't be assuming anything) looks at him, is a better one than he could expect. Not that he knows what a Nazi is, but if there's weirder where this guy comes from, then hopefully interacting should go smoothly enough.

"Yeah, don't worry about me, just your average talking skeleton monster." He winks, even though that requires closing his whole left eye socket. "And no bees. If there are any, I'll tell 'em to buzz off."

[iamresponding]

"Oh god. Puns."

He'd left the puns behind, dammit. That was the one good part of running up into outer space. Nobody got away with puns up there like back home. Totally different style of banter.

Still, it was a language Rich hadn't forgotten how to speak and he wasn't without a sense of humor.

"You know what? Whatever. I won't let 'em get under my skin. I bet you never let anything get under your skin, right?"

Because he didn't have any. Eeeeeeeeeey.

[ribticklers]

Of course puns. But the guy seems willing to play along, and that's all that Sans needs to keep rolling. Actually, he really doesn't even need that. He's pretty round for a skeleton.

"'Course not. If they've got a bone to pick, well, they'll have to try the next guy. I've got a lot of work to not do.

The name's Sans, by the way. Sans the skeleton."

[enthraller]

The sprawling park had an odd look to it, tidier than any truly natural spot but without the orderly manner of the gardens he was used to. Still, it was a nice enough place to wander, and less overwhelming than the rest of the ship, so Saralegui wasn't complaining.

Until he nearly tripped over a body sprawled on the grass. That certainly drew a soft curse out of him, as he stumbled back to avoid actually stepping on the man.

The irritated frown lasted only a moment before it was wiped clean, replaced with an expression that was more cautiously curious, and more socially acceptable given the situation. Saralegui leant down, hands on his knees and long hair slipping forward over his shoulders, tone tentatively light.

"Should I be worried about your health?"

Anywhere else, he might have skipped right to the "perfect image of concern" bit. But hey, it's space or the future or something. Who was he to make assumptions about anything?

[iamresponding]

Whoops. Rich hadn't really intended to lay where people could trip over him but it made sense they'd be exploring the place all over like he'd been. Truth be told, he'd half-fallen asleep like that, and being tripped on jolted him wide awake, making him roll over and bolt upright, sitting there and blinking at Saralegui owlishly.

He was not someone that eased into waking up. He always jolted out of it, ready for a fight, and he looked like he'd only barely stopped himself from jumping to his feet. Someone didn't wake up like that unless they were used to being woken out of dead sleep because of an attack.

It took only a half second for Saralegui's words to register. Even half-asleep as he'd been, he'd caught them. He rubbed at his eyes.

"Mmm, I'm fine. Relaxing turned to catnapping there for a little while."

Yes, catnapping on his face in the grass. Itchy thought it was it was...texture. It was something other than the cold void of space. It was like being home and after dying and coming back it was just...nice.

"I was just -- wow, it's been hard explaining sticking my face in the grass." This new guy hadn't been the only person that'd been concerned and even after the other people, Rich kept doing it anyway. It just felt good. "I haven't had grass under my toes for a while. If that makes any sense."

[enthraller]

"It's fine." The corner of Saralegui's mouth quirked up slightly with amusement, but mercifully that was as close to mocking as he came. "I've had long trips by boat before. I suppose I can understand the feeling."

Apparently satisfied, he straightened up, hands sliding up to rest at his hips. His smile took on a sweet edge that was, admitted, just a little bit teasing.

"But perhaps you should find someplace better to relax. A more secluded patch of grass where no one can trip on you or think you're dead, maybe."

[iamresponding]

"Sounds like a plan."

He stood up, gathering his boots and socks and hopping over the fence to the area where the "Imagine" memorial was, briefly letting his eyes linger on it as he walked past. It was set into the ground just like the real thing, colored tiles creating a little mosaic you could walk on.

Then he took a seat on a park bench and looked up at the light filtering through the trees, finally pulling on his socks and boots again and tucking in his blue shirt. It felt strange to be in civvies after all this time, and to even be comfortable in them, he had to keep them neat.

And to think there was a time he dressed like a total slob.

"Can you believe this? The tech required to maintain a habitat this complex on a ship like this... it's incredible. Pretty sure there's nothing like it back home. The only thing they don't seem as good with as they are back in my universe is cloning. They weren't able to clone me a new arm compatible with my powers."

He lifted up his robotic prosthetic and flexed the fingers.

"But this is still a damn fine piece of tech they set me up with. Almost as responsive as a cybernetic would be and nothing's linked up to my nerves or anything."

[enthraller]

Rich lost him a bit with that last bit of rambling. Saralegui paused a moment while the other man settled himself in on the bench, frowning slightly in confusion, before trailing after.

"That isn't your real arm?" It didn't look natural, but still, he wouldn't have guessed... "How does it move, then?"

He shouldn't have been surprised, just given the ship they were on. But it was a surprise nonetheless, and Saralegui found himself looking over the prosthetic with an intensely fascinated stare.